And you thought that YOU ate some funny mushrooms back in your college days! Just take a look at the 'shrooms that the seven island castaways in the 1963 Japanese horror outing "Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People" partake in! In this film, the seven people in question go on a yacht outing, get trapped in a storm and are washed ashore on a desert isle. The seven--the skipper, his first mate, a beautiful TV star, another pretty girl, a millionaire (hey, wait a minute...could "Gilligan's Island," which premiered the following year, have stolen from THIS film of all films?!?!), a writer and a psychiatrist--feed on the funny fungi and are soon turned into walking shiitakes themselves. Actually, despite the outrageous title and bizarre plot, this is a fairly levelheaded, reasonably intelligent and restrained film, not the laughable piece of crap you might be expecting. The picture is very well shot, and appears just fine on this pristine-looking, wide-screen DVD. The first half is a bit slow but nonetheless suspenseful, as the characters explore the perpetually fog-enshrouded island, and the second half, in which the fungus folk get it on, is occasionally quite trippy and hallucinatory. Remarkably, this DVD also features loads of interesting extras, including interviews with some of the folks behind the cameras and some fun trailers for other Toho Studios pictures. All in all, this film is certainly worth a rental...if only so that you can tell your coworkers that you saw a movie last night called "Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People"!
